Pouch compositions are known in the art. These compositions are easy to dose, handle, transport and store. Usually the pouches are formed by placing two sheets of film together, heat sealing three edges, filling and then heat-sealing the forth edge. Recently, water-soluble pouches containing cleaning or fabric care compositions have become popular. It is desirable that cleaning or fabric care compositions contain certain actives that are often incompatible with one another or are more efficient when released at different times in the wash cycle. Therefore, it is advantageous to formulate a pouch with two or more distinct phases which are usually contained in different compartments. Multi-compartment pouches are known. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,224,601 which discloses a package which contains a toxic composition and is divided into two compartments. However, for a variety of reasons, it is difficult to quickly and efficiently produce such multi-phase/multi-compartment pouches using prior art methods. For example, when forming a multi-compartment pouch it is often difficult to accurately align the different films with each other meaning production is slowed and quality is not properly controlled. In addition, prior art methods of forming multi-compartment pouches often damage the film material due to the mechanical forces necessary to place and hold the film in the correct position.
The present invention provides a way of quickly and efficiently forming multi-phase pouches The present process allows the multi-phase pouch to be formed in a single mould and helps mitigate the problems associated with prior art methods especially the problem of aligning the films.